Biden’s policy reversal towards El Salvador’s ‘cool dictator’ exposes the cynical emptiness of the empire’s democratic vocation
Latin America’s youngest dictator is celebrating his “re-election” after flouting the laws of his country, ditching human rights, doing deals with criminal gangs, and swallowing the media.
None of this should surprise us—Nayib Bukele in El Salvador is heir to a long line of distasteful despots who wouldn’t recognise democracy if it slapped them with a taco.
But what is perplexing about Bukele’s case is the reaction of the empire: a Democratic president in the White House has been wrong-footed by a young, media-savvy prestidigitator in the tropics and is now playing catch-up.
After several years of holding Bukele at arm’s length because of the bad smell, why is Joe Biden now cosying up to him?
Illegitimate re-election
There is little doubt that Bukele won the election earlier this month by a large margin—and why this occurred.
The poll was not about visions for El Salvador’s future—it was about how to maintain an end to violence in a country ravaged by crime and corruption.
Bukele’s signature policy has been an iron-fisted clampdown against gangs conducted under a state of emergency that is built on a simple premise: put as many people as you can behind bars and throw away the key.
It has had an impact, although no one knows how long it will last: El Salvador once had one of the highest homicide rates in the world but, under Bukele, it has tumbled to the lowest in Central America.
So its citizens voted for him because they want this to continue—nothing controversial there.
But while there is no doubt Bukele won the popular vote, there is also no doubt that he lacks any semblance of democratic legitimacy. Indeed, his return to the presidential palace tells us much more about double standards in both El Salvador and the US than about how to pacify a crime-infested backwater.
In fact, his re-election is a democratic insult—numerous constitutional prohibitions on consecutive presidential terms meant he was not allowed to stand, but he did so anyway.
Bukele rode roughshod over the law by cajoling and threatening congress, the judiciary, and anyone else who got in the way. Observers point to wholesale gerrymandering and electoral irregularities that call into question the scale of his victory itself.
Contempt for the law has been a signature trait of El Salvador’s dictator. His gang clampdown is based on systematic abuses of the rights that are essential to the rule of law.
In 2022, he declared a state of emergency that ditched key safeguards such as due process and gave the government sweeping authority to conduct surveillance, arrest and prosecute anyone they declared to be gang members.
The legislative assembly under Bukele’s New Ideas party passed outrageous judicial reforms giving prosecutors the ability to conduct mass trials of up to 900 people at once and making it all but impossible for them to prove their innocence.
A staggering 75,000 people have been arrested, and with Israeli help to build a new mega-prison El Salvador now has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
Human rights organisations are horrified and point to systematic abuses. Relatives of those unjustly imprisoned have formed a movement.
Bukele’s re-election also attests to the power he exerts over the media in a small country that is easy to control.
Critics says he has built a communications juggernaut driven by paid internet trolls whose online attacks endanger journalists and political opponents, and through aggressive manipulation of state-controlled media.
His image is burnished through a government communications strategy that has invested in state-run news sources and social media—on X alone, he has more than 5.8 million followers—while persecuting honest and critical journalists.
Bukele’s success also reeks of political corruption—from the use of state funds, state facilities and communication media to campaign, to access by members of his party to loans from the state bank, to allegations that far from confronting criminal gangs, he has done deals with them.
Imperial U-turn
It is against this backdrop that we encounter the most curious aspect of the Bukele interregnum—the stark reversal in policy by Biden’s administration.
This raises questions about US motives in El Salvador while also highlighting its imperial vocation.
In the first 18 months of Bukele’s presidency, Donald Trump was in the White House. These two men are natural soulmates, suggesting warm ties—and indeed Bukele was an outspoken supporter of Trump’s hard line on migration and sought to build on the long security ties El Salvador has had with the empire.
Relations were soon strained: Bukele learned that dealing with the US was always a transaction. The Trump administration cut some aid to El Salvador to force it to combat irregular migration, then reduced military aid as part of a Democratic initiative to strengthen anti-corruption efforts.
This set the scene for strained relations with Biden.
At first, the new US administration directed its energy at attacking Bukele’s autocratic tendencies and the corruption of close allies, with key figures such as secretary of state Antony Blinken and vice president Kamala Harris expressing dismay over his interference in the judiciary, and “deep concerns about El Salvador’s democracy”.
The bitching hit a low when Blinken questioned Bukele’s tactics in responding to gang violence and, in an apparent response to the criticism, El Salvador abstained from the UN General Assembly vote condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Bukele’s characteristic response to US criticism has been rhetorical, mostly through social media.
As ties deteriorated he published a private WhatsApp conversation with a former charge d’affaires of the US embassy in El Salvador, who said the bilateral relationship between the erstwhile allies was “on pause”.
In an ironic criticism of his imperial tormentors, El Salvador’s president changed his Twitter profile to read “the coolest dictator in the world”.
Yet here we are today in a US election year, two years of squabbling and one landslide later, amid signs of a breathtaking reversal in White House policy.
Suddenly, facing a border crisis, under pressure in Ukraine and Israel, losing his grasp on his reality let alone his popularity, and under siege from a resurgent Trump, Biden needs friends. The criticisms have been silenced and he is now Bukele’s bosom buddy.
The steps for this were laid at least six months before this month’s election in El Salvador in a timeline that suggests close coordination of US foreign policy moves with Bukele’s campaign.
In August, Blinken feted El Salvador’s foreign minister in Washington and the US ambassador to El Salvador then donated two helicopter engines to the Salvadoran Air Force.
Then, the day before Bukele registered his (illegal) candidacy for the election in October, US assistant secretary of state for western hemispheric affairs Brian Nichols flew in to shake hands with him at the presidential palace.
Nichols later noted—without a hint of irony—that among topics discussed was “bilateral collaboration on the rule of law”. The hypocrisy reeks.
There are two main reasons for the US policy reversal.
First, and predictably, migration—which Washington maintains is closely related to the problem of gang violence. In this critical election year, Biden needs Central American nations like El Salvador to curb migration to the southern border.
By biting its lip, the White House is acknowledging that the mano dura policy of Bukele has, on paper, had some success in tackling gangs, which in turn implies a decline in migration.
It’s about China, stupid!
However, the second main reason for America’s U-turn is far more important to Washington than a few grubby migrants.
Biden’s Pauline conversion to Saint Bukele comes in a rare period when US foreign policymakers find themselves on the backfoot in the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East—and being kept awake at night by the fear of another one, in Taiwan.
It is no coincidence that China was quick to congratulate Bukele on his victory, as Beijing has been putting considerable effort into nurturing El Salvador’s horrible hipster.
El Salvador’s policy towards China began to change before Bukele came to power.
In 2018, the then Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén broke diplomatic relations with Taiwan and established relations with China in return for $150m in aid—infuriating Washington.
No sooner had Bukele taken office in mid-2019 than he rubbed salt in the wound, accepting Chinese offers of tens of millions of dollars in aid to support major infrastructure projects. Bukele travelled to China where he was promised $500m in investment for prestige projects such as a spanking new National Library—something all dictators find irresistible.
Relations have also prospered beyond investments with frequent exchanges between officials from both governments. Bukele wants to join the high-profile Belt and Road Initiative—a global infrastructure strategy—and Salvadoran students has benefited from hundreds of scholarships in China.
From China’s point of view, there is nothing exceptional about El Salvador, other than the receptiveness of its dictator to their wads of cash.
Beijing has three main objectives in its Central American policy: promoting the “one-China principle” aimed at isolating and ultimately reintegrating Taiwan; influencing local elites who are willing to replicate China’s anti-US narratives; and strengthening interest in its own model of autocratic capitalism that promises visible and rapid modernisation.
In small, poor countries like El Salvador, it is pushing at an open door—all the evidence suggest public support for China’s infrastructure developments which Bukele can then exploit for political advantage.
The diplomatic gains made by Beijing are self-evident: in August last year, for example, the Central American parliament, Parlacen, voted to revoke Taiwan’s permanent observer status and admit China as an observer instead.
China’s friendship is also of considerable political value, because it offers dictators like Bukele an economic partnership without having to worry about human rights conditions.
It’s working: while there is no evidence Chinese soft power is changing attitudes at a popular level, its influence at a political level is growing rapidly and it offers leaders a potent role model of authoritarian capitalism.
This is what alarms the White House, which evokes a love-hate relationship with Latin Americans that complicates its diplomatic efforts.
One reason for that is because Washington’s contradictory, hypocritical and inconsistent behaviour has long suggested a complete lack of concern for popular democratic attitudes—or indeed for the welfare of Central American citizens per se. It is only concerned with ruling elites and the political class. In terms of realpolitik, it is a failure of messaging.
What concerns Biden is the attraction of leaders such as Bukele to China’s inducements—in turn, Washington’s hostility to signs of engagement with Beijing represents the biggest foreign policy challenge facing El Salvador’s president.
When Bukele signed several deals with China in 2021, for example, the then-US acting assistant secretary of western hemisphere affairs Julie Chung warned him on Twitter, again without a hint of irony: “Mister President, nothing from China comes without conditions.”
Bukele is a smart operator and not unaware that pushing Chinese buttons can win him US concessions.
He has begun to do so. Last year, for example, he stopped negotiating a 5G deal with the Chinese telecoms provider Huawei—which is the target of US sanctions—and is now working with Washington to create a secure 5G service.
It is this fancy footwork and his ability to repair damaged relations that have resulted in grandpa Biden having to constantly play catch up.
Scrutiny
At a time US foreign policy is under greater scrutiny than ever, the Biden administration’s cynical U-turn has not gone unnoticed.
The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), an NGO in the US, is among those angered by White House hypocrisy.
They point to clear US support for the illegal Bukele candidacy that promotes dangerous falsehoods—that a landslide mandate can in fact justify law-breaking, and that the election could in fact be free and fair anyway.
But regardless of the empire’s duplicitous behaviour, it is the people of El Salvador who will pay the price for the hubris of their illegitimate leader.
That is because Bukele’s popularity is premised on successes on crime, migration and the economy that are all largely illusory and built on millennial cyber gimmicks such as bitcoin and viral social media posts.
Violent crime was falling when Bukele took power, and the transnational criminal gangs within El Salvador were already crumbling.
In turn, the premise was that migration by Salvadorans was largely being fuelled by criminal violence, and that when this stopped people would inevitably stop leaving. The reality, however, is that not only have Salvadoran citizens continued to flee to the US, they may be doing so in larger numbers than before.
Last but not least, Bukele’s oft-stated premise was that El Salvador’s economy would take off when the problem of crime had been resolved.
But yet again, the opposite has been the case and the poor performance of the economy is much as it was before Bukele decided that democracy was no longer cool.
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Categories: Central America, El Salvador, North America, United States